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1Crossing economic geography and international business to understand the collocation of multinationals in agglomerations
An analysis of its inception
Jose Luis Hervás-Oliver and Gregorio Gonzalez Alcaide
1.1 Introduction
The intersection between international business (IB) and economic geography (EG) is very recent and still represents an emerging debate, which is rather inconclusive. The turn towards outward-looking global value chains has provoked the necessity to get more insights about Multinationals (MNE) collocating or connecting local clusters. Despite the intensive focus on global value chains from EG (e.g. Amin and Thrift, 1992; Bathelt et al., 2004), MNEs are said to be much more studied within the IB strand. Assuming that IB needs to learn the subtleties of territories and the nuances of agglomerations from EG, while EG needs to borrow knowledge on MNEs from the IB perspective, as stated by scholars (e.g. McCann and Mudambi, 2004; Hervás-Oliver and Boix-Domènech, 2013), this study seeks to explore the common roots or fundamentals shared by the inception of that intersection between IB and EG/regional science literatures. Because IB refers to localization as the national level, dismissing local properties found in agglomerations and thus does not explicitly recognize the subtleties of the local space (e.g. Dunning, 2009; McCann and Mudambi, 2004; Narula, 2014), both constitute relevant theoretical exceptions; while EG tackles MNEs as a minor construct within agglomerations by emphasizing the meso-level connections through global value chains or global pipelines (e.g. Bathelt et al., 2004; Hervás-Oliver and Boix-Domènech, 2013 and Sedita et al., 2013 are interesting exceptions). As a result of this dual yet intertwined perspective, knowledge about that phenomenon remains fragmented and incomplete. Integration of literatures and exploration of their potential intersection, addressing a similar phenomenon from different perspectives, require a more in-depth and systematic analysis of their literatures and, specifically, of their fundamentals or foundations.
This study’s objective consists of analysing the fundamentals of the intersection between EG and IB literatures addressing the collocation of MNEs in agglomerations. This study applies a bibliometric analysis in order to understand and extend knowledge on the collocation of MNEs in agglomerations. In doing so, it sheds light on the inception studies that, from different approaches, started to tackle that phenomenon.
1.2 Crossing IB and EG: a short overview
EG literature, along with innovation and technological change, has traditionally taken account of localization advantages (Marshall, 1890), emphasizing the local nodes in global networks (e.g. Amin and Thrift, 1992) or global pipelines (e.g. Bathelt et al., 2004) and even recognizing the leading role of MNEs in agglomerations opening networks and fostering knowledge exchange (Harrison, 1994; Eisingerich et al., 2010; Hervás-Oliver and Boix-Domènech, 2013; Sedita et al., 2013). Following Hervás-Oliver (2015) those inter-cluster or external linkages (Cooke, 2005; Hervás-Oliver and Albors-Garrigós, 2008) are usually connected through MNE subsidiaries which operate in a cluster and convey knowledge in a two-way street through their internal MNE channels (e.g. Cooke, 2005). From this perspective, opening clusters/industrial districts is a way to reduce lock-in (Bathelt et al., 2004; Hervás-Oliver and Albors-Garrigós, 2008; Eisingerich et al., 2010). EG and technical change literature, however, have failed to encompass the role of MNEs, which remain as black boxes within agglomerations, Cooke (2005) being a formidable exception.
On the contrary, IB literature has mainly focused on MNEs throughout countries, giving less importance to the local specificities of agglomerations, also with remarkable exceptions (e.g. Alcácer and Chung, 2014; Majocchi and Presutti, 2009; Meyer et al., 2011; Nachum and Keeble, 2003a, 2003b) that have paved the way to explore the agglomeration construct in order to enrich MNEs’ decisions from an IB perspective. The latter body of literature has pioneered the intersection between EG and IB, but, unfortunately, it has received less attention in the IB literature as there are few works on that topic. Besides, it has not impacted on the EG, nor has it opened new research lines. Despite this fragmentation, there are major coincidences in respect of diverse topics within both strands. First, the importance of embeddedness and inter-firm interaction is recognized in both literatures (from IB, e.g. Narula, 2014; Narula and Santangelo, 2012; Meyer et al., 2011; Rugman et al., 2011; Pla-Barber and Puig, 2009; Nachum and Keeble, 2003a, 2003b; from EG, e.g. Hervás-Oliver and Boix-Domènech, 2013; Sedita et al., 2013). Second, the integration-responsiveness or fit between subsidiaries’ activities and agglomerations depends on the specific host location (from IB, e.g. Rugman et al., 2011; Mudambi and Venzin, 2010), especially in the case of clusters (Tallman and Chacar, 2011; Nachum and Keeble, 2003a, 2003b; from EG, Hervás-Oliver and Boix-Domènech, 2013), subsidiaries’ internal resources notwithstanding.
1.3 Bibliometric application: crossing EG and IB
Crossing both disciplines requires a deep understanding of the relationship and commonalities between those views addressing different, yet intertwined, topics. Bibliometrics consist of analysing knowledge diffusion and generation through the study of scientific publications. For example, the identification of the literature that aggregates the highest citation index in a given discipline or theme permits us to determine which are those authoritative publications or seminal studies (those most used and diffused) that have established the fundamentals or cornerstones of that discipline or topic (Shibata et al., 2007; Zupic and Cater, 2014). See more in Tu (2011).
Bibliometrics have recently been applied to EG in different works (e.g. Hervás-Oliver et al., 2015; Lazzereti et al., 2014), producing a systematic, quantitative, objective and complete coverage of that literature within EG. Following a similar approach as the one used in those studies, we explore the intersection between IB and EG literatures, analysing their focus on similar phenomena: the intersection of agglomerations and MNE collocation. For this purpose, we searched within the Social Sc...
